Many thanks to NetGalley and Algonquin Press for gifting me a digital ARC of this debut novel by Shruti Swamy and allowing me to participate in the blog tour. 4 stars!
Vidya grew up with the expectations of her father and tradition in the 1960s in Bombay. She was expected to take care of her father and younger brother after her mother left. She was expected to act like a girl and not play with the boys she so desperately wanted to. She was expected to go to college and become an engineer, only to return home and take care of her father. But when she sees a dance performance called Kathak, she is desperate to learn and perfect the art. But can she dance and go to school, marry and have a child? At what cost?
This was a beautifully written coming-of-age story that goes beyond the normal. The author takes the reader on a journey of Vidya's experiences, where she is always facing others expectations based on her gender, race, class. Always in the background of her choices is her elusive mother. This was a slower read and it moves abruptly into different times of Vidya's life, which makes reading it a bit more of a challenge. But it is haunting, beautiful and will definitely cause you to pause and think.
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